


Cherish Thy Heart

by japansace



Series: My Love, We Deserve the Softest Eternity [21]
Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: + magic, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Domestic Fluff, Elves, Intersex Elves, King Victor Nikiforov, M/M, Queen Yuuri Katsuki, a lot of people cry in this because they're just so happy dfghjkl;
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-06
Updated: 2020-10-06
Packaged: 2021-03-07 21:40:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,695
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26864527
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/japansace/pseuds/japansace
Summary: Victor holds out a hand. “Come. Let me introduce you to her.”(feat. art by caramel_draws)
Relationships: Katsuki Yuuri/Victor Nikiforov
Series: My Love, We Deserve the Softest Eternity [21]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1133426
Comments: 55
Kudos: 205





	Cherish Thy Heart

**Author's Note:**

> I tried to get this out yesterday for YOI-iversary, but I had an all-day headache and couldn't manage it. Oh well. Happy four years regardless~!
> 
> By the way, if anyone cares, Yuki’s birthday is April 3rd. It’s the day (according to fandom lore) in which Victor showed up in Hasetsu ~~uninvited~~ to be Yuuri’s coach.
> 
> Ages: 
> 
> Victor: 4781  
> Yuuri: 4741  
> Yuri: 516  
> Yuki: 0

Yuki has little knit socks on.

Yuki has little knit socks on, and Victor can’t _handle it._

He would make a noise—a squeal or a scream of delight—but Victor is too conscious of the peace now, to ever break it.

They’ve moved into their rooms, to settle in and rest after the ordeal. The acerbic scent of blood has dampened by this point, covered up by something far more milky and soft. Yuuri lies on his side upon the bed—cocooned in blankets—with Yuki beside him, holding her hand while she makes little snuffling noises in her sleep.

Victor could snow in a whole _empire_ _,_ so overcome is he with joy.

“Um—” Yuri stalls, in the doorway. Victor heard him come in—there’s no way he couldn’t have, with how hyperaware he’s become of anyone being around the baby—but he let Yuri hang back, until he was ready.

Seems now he was ready.

Victor holds out a hand to him. “Come. Let me introduce you to her.”

Yuri creeps across the floor, taking his father’s hand for courage. He leans above the bed and observes Yuki, where she’s sleeping with an open mouth.

“Oh…” Yuri’s mouth gapes similarly, with a lack of words upon the tongue. Victor can very much relate in that regard. It’s hard to find anything intelligent to say, in the face of her. “She’s… so small.”

Victor hums, encouragingly.

Yuri takes this as the invitation it is, reaching out to touch one of her bare arms, from where it’s escaped the swath of her blanket. She twitches in her sleep at this, then settles with a sigh that moves the whole of her body.

“That’s—” Yuri sucks in a breath. “She’s—”

“She’s your _sister_ ,” Victor says, placing a hand over Yuri’s shoulder.

“Ah, fuck.” Yuri scrubs at his eyes, with the back of a sleeve. “Ah, why—why did you have to _say that—_?”

Victor and Yuuri laugh: at their precious Yura, with their equally precious Yuka.

* * *

Yuuri doesn’t think he’ll ever get his mother to stop holding Yuki. She hasn’t put her down once since she’s arrived: smiling at her, making faces at her, cooing words and little songs at her. The baby has slept through most of it, but that doesn’t seem to deter Hiroko in the slightest; she keeps on looking, playing, singing, like her whole world has narrowed down to the single being in her arms.

“Will I ever get her back, you think?” Yuuri teases.

His father laughs, from where he sits upon the bed beside Yuuri with an arm wrapped around his son’s shoulders. “It may prove to be a challenge. I’m surprised you and Mari ever learned to walk, with how often she held you.”

“What was that?” Mari says, her eyes fading red to brown as she settles her attention on them again.  
  
“Mari,” Yuuri says, his tone low in warning, “what are you telling my dogs?”

“ _Nothing_ ,” she insists. She picks one of them up from where they’re strewn about—the one she’d gifted them—and holds it up to her face, rubbing her nose against its snout. “Just that they need to take care of my niece by _any means necessary_ , that’s all,” she tells them, using baby-talk to deliver the message, which ironically only makes it more unsettling, not less.

“ _Mari_.”

“What?” She lowers the dog to her lap. “You disapprove?”  
  
“Not necessarily—”  
  
“Then leave me be.” Her eyes flicker again, no doubt instilling more in the dogs the importance of the sacred mission she’s imparting on them.

Yuuri just shakes his head.

* * *

Lilia is quiet, for a long time.

She looks up finally, from Yuki’s sleeping form. “You did well, Yuuratchka. Vitya was completely bald when he was born.”

“Mo _ther."_  
  
“What? These are the facts.” Lilia reaches out a hand, to trace over the ridge of Yuki’s forehead. “Had the faintest white eyebrows I’d ever seen. Made his head look twice its size.”

Victor just pouts, while Yuuri curls against the mattress with laughter.

“You made a good one though. Not a flaw that I can see.”

Yakov looks on, from over his wife’s shoulder. There’s a tenseness in his shoulders unbecoming of a grandfather meeting for the first time their grandchild; it belies a history that spans millennia, a feeling wide and cavernous as the dwarven mines of the Western Mountains.

Yuuri can read him, precisely, without ever having to peek into his mind: the furrow in his brow that says, “Was I too strict with my son?”; the curling of his fingers that asks, “Was I focused too much on being a good king to be a good father?”; the tremor in his frame that cries, “Is my son both a better king _and_ father than I ever was?”

He’s softened with age, this wizened, old timber of a man. Yuuri doesn’t hold grudges against him, though he knows he could have raised his Vitya better. What matters now is that he tries to be better today than he was yesterday.

For that is the beauty of elves: They have quite a lot of time to work out their issues.

Yuuri holds out his hand.

Yakov’s skittering look: _I’m nervous; I called Vitya “too green,” when he took the throne._

Yuuri’s hand again, shaken lightly: _We know why you did. You were scared. Change is hard, after ten thousand years._

Yakov taking it, drawing an age-spotted thumb over the knuckles: _You’ve made a precious thing. You know that, right?_

Yuuri’s gentle head tilt, a luminous smile: _I do indeed._

Yuki’s small snuffle, as she turns in her sleep: a sacred silence upon them all.

* * *

“I made this happen,” Phichit says, Yuki tucked into the bend of his arm. He looks at Yuuri, briefly, only to immediately look down at Yuki again. “ _Me_. I did this.”

“Oh?” Victor says, from his sprawl upon the bed. “Pray tell.”

Phichit rolls his eyes, as though it’s the most obvious thing in the world. “ _Clearly_ , I’m the one who set you two up, at our first collective banquet. Remember? I said—well actually I can’t recall what I said, but it was something _profound_ , I’m _sure._ ”

Yuuri turns into a pillow, with a smirk. “Oh, it was something like… you thought _His Highness_ might want to see me more often than every thousand years.”

“Yes, exactly!” Yuki utters a small cry—at the exclamation—and Yuuri and Victor are both there, with waiting arms, before Phichit has even had a chance to react.

“Goddess on high, _relax_.” Phichit rocks her, only staring down the troubled parents. “At this rate, she’s going to be coddled into oblivion.”

“You’ve had a long enough time with her already,” Christophe says, coming over from his seat upon the chaise to get his fair share. “My turn.”

Yuki takes to the transfer well enough, settling in after the startle. Christophe sets himself upon the bed with the rest of the party, prodding at her curled-up fingers lain against his chest.

“And if anyone deserves credit for _this_ ,” he continues, gesturing to the bundle in his arms, “it’s _me_. I’m the one who convinced Victor to propose.” He scoffs, with a crooked lip. “’Only ten years,’ he wrote me. As though that means anything at _all._ When you know, you know!”

“And I did know,” Victor says, taking up Yuuri’s hand to kiss the back of it.

Christophe makes a face of faux-revulsion. “You two, I _swear_."

* * *

Minako holds Yuki with a force that Yuuri would find menacing, if she was anyone else: a seemingly bone-crushing grip—though in actuality, gentle as summer rain—with the long, spindly nails of an elf who sees polite society very little.

But Yuuri knows why she is like this, what Yuki, as a concept, means for them both.

So he leaves her be.

“She’s good,” Minako says, with a trembling lip. “No, better than good. She’s—ah, damn it—” Yuuri and Victor laugh at her, as she scrapes at her face. “I’m still mad at you two, you know?” She looks up from Yuki, with a pronounced pout. “Now I’ll have to visit Sealand and Sunland for an equal amount of time, as per the agreement.”

“Those are the terms,” Victor says, at the very least ostensibly apologetic. He adjusts on the bed, to reach out and pet Yuki’s hair, brush it away from her face. “Don’t you think she makes it all worth it though, in the end?”

Despite trying to remain stoic, Minako’s mouth is soon enough trembling, yet again. “Yes—yes, goddess yes, just _look at her_.”

* * *

Victor helps Yuuri up, with a hand to the small of the back. He’s sore from his ordeal, to be sure, but the pain will only last a day or two at most, and the pair is quite aware of it. Yuuri’s elven body is already well on its way to repair; and in fact it’s healing him in such a way as to be twice as durable for the short-term, as the magic in him spills forth untempered to replenish what he’s given afore to the child.

Still, Victor likes to fuss over Yuuri, as is well established.

Victor takes him before their vanity, Yuuri rifling through the drawers before he draws out the alexandrite betrothal necklace from its velvet station.

Yuki cannot carry it now, small as she is. But Yuuri lays it out over her olive skin regardless just to see her with it: just to watch it twinkle in the lowlight of the setting sun, cast a pretty ombre upon her in her parents’ preferred colors. She’s awake for the moment and fists at the gemstone, from where the cool sensation lies upon her chest. They’ll have to be careful, if they wish not to see it in her mouth; but the image she gives them now—blue-purple, blue _again_ , the piercing gaze of her—is enough to warrant any saliva they’ll have to wipe away later.

Without having to converse, Yuuri and Victor each reach out a hand to cup her around the cheek and kiss her upon the head.

**Author's Note:**

> After this, the updates are gonna be all over the place--timeline-wise--again, so prepare yourselves.
> 
> (Edit: New art is by [caramel_draws](https://twitter.com/caramel_draws)! Thank you so much for capturing this sweet moment. <3)


End file.
